How to - Adding Inline Images to Your Posts

Adding Inline Imagesto Your Posts
A picture might be “worth a thousand words” as the old adage goes, but a picture and a few well chosen words can be priceless when it comes to electronics projects. Inline images can help get the point across or communicate information others might need to assist you. Here are links to a few examples that include circuit schematics, illustrations, and project photos:

Source Images
Whether it’s scanned hand drawings, screen captures from a cad program, digital photos, or bitmaps drawn in Paint, they should all be converted to the web-friendly JPEG format. If you don’t have any photo editing software on your computer, not to worry, the Paint program that comes with Windows can convert just about anything to a .jpg file. After you’re done editing, cropping, annotating and resizing the image, click File, then Save as… In the Save As window, choose JPEG from the Save as type menu.

All the images in this post were processed with Paint. Working with Paint takes a little practice, but it’s amazing what you can do with it.

Capturing an Active Window or a CAD Circuit
You can convert just whatever you see on your monitor to a JPEG with the help of Paint and the Print Screen (Prt Sc) key. The Prt Sc key captures what you see on your monitor and stores it to the clipboard. Alt + Prt Sc captures just the active window. Once you’ve got the image on your clipboard, paste it into Paint, clean it up, and save it as a JPEG. That’s how the image above was captured.

Circuit CAD programs tend not to have an export to JPEG option, but you can use this technique to get a quick JPEG copy of what you drew:
- If you are capturing an active window, set it to a screen friendly size.
- If you are capturing a circuit or layout from CAD software, make sure to zoom in/out to a useful size.
- Press Alt + Prt Sc to copy the window.
- In Paint, click Edit and select Paste.
- Clean up the image and save it as a JPEG.

Inserting JPEGs into Your Posts
The Quick Reply field at the bottom of existing threads doesn’t work real well for HTML editing. Use the Post Reply button instead, or New Topic if you want to start a new thread.

As far as I know, a post with inline images requires two passes.

First pass:
- Enter the text portion of your post. It’s a good idea to write the filenames of the images you plan to insert as place holders.
- Use the Attachment manager to upload the files you plan to include.
- Click Submit.

Please Observe
- Use hyperlinks or references to existing material instead of images whenever possible.
- Downsize high resolution photos before posting. Again, 6-inches wide or smaller. Even breadboard close-ups should only take 250 KB.
- Crop any part of a screen capture that isn’t necessary.
- Try to keep images 6 inches wide or less.
- If you are using a photo editing software, use compressed JPEGs.
- If your post is applicable to more than one group, post it in the most appropriate group only. Post references to it in the other the other groups.

That image might be sitting in your browser's cache. I see a generic image placeholder icon in the post where the image should appear. I get a "Invalid Attachment specified. If you followed a valid link, please notify the administrator" error when I try to click on the area where the image is supposed to go.

Phil
I do not see how to do number 4.
When I use the attachment manager to upload images if I right click on the thumbnails all I
get are standard windows context items "Copy link address" or 'Copy image address appear
nowhere.
I must be doing something wrong like using the wrong thing to upload images.

I tried a test message tonight to play aound but still do not see the number 4 selections